Coronavirus live news: Philippines locks down 13 million in Manila; Japan to expand state of emergency

Manila to be under tightest quarantine curbs from 6-20 August; Japan set to expand state of emergency

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• UK coronavirus updates – live

10.44am BST

Moscow has abolished a widely-flouted requirement for people to wear gloves in public places and shops as daily coronavirus cases in the Russian capital stayed below 4,000, down from over 7,000 earlier this month.

Reuters reports:

Moscow reported 3,481 new infections on Friday and 76 deaths, even as the number of daily nationwide cases, at 23,564, remained close to levels recorded at the start of the month with 794 nationwide deaths in the last 24 hours.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the number of newly detected Covid-19 cases in Moscow was, however, 2.2 times lower than during the peak of a wave of infections in the second half of June, which authorities blamed on the contagious Delta variant and the slow rate of vaccinations.

10.15am BST

Relaxing restrictions like mask-wearing and social distancing when most people have been vaccinated greatly increases the risk of vaccine-resistant variants of the virus that causes Covid-19, according to new research.

AFP reports:

At a time when nearly 60% of Europeans have received at least one vaccine dose, the authors said their modelling study showed the need to maintain non-vaccination measures until everyone is fully jabbed.

To predict how the SARS-CoV-2 virus might mutate in response to vaccination campaigns, a pan-European team of experts simulated the probability of a vaccine-resistant strain emerging in a population of 10 million people over three years.

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